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shk
Asked: 2012-01-17 02:44:36 +0800 CST

Interupts and context switching

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I have server with Linux ubuntu 3.0.0-12-server #20-Ubuntu x86_64x operation system.

I run erlang/otp application on it. Under high load i see that i server has very high context switches and interupts.

I have NIC:

[    1.720140] bnx2: Broadcom NetXtreme II Gigabit Ethernet Driver bnx2 v2.1.6 (Mar 7, 2011)

If i do ifconfig:

Interrupt:16 Memory:f6000000-f6012800

How can i increase this value: Interrupt:16

Thank you.

ubuntu networking drivers

2 Answers

  1. I think you're confused, that's the interrupt and memory space used by your NIC to communicate with your system - most hardware adapters has one or both of those configurations.

    Think of it as the address of that particular adapter, so that the system knows how to talk to it.

    It's got nothing to do with how it's performing at all.

    Out of interest what numbers of context-switches and interrupts are you actually getting - large numbers in these figures are not always a problem you know.

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  2. Take a look at /proc/interrupts -- that lists interrupts allocated in the system and how often they have occured. If one number stands out in particular, then this interrupt source is most likely the culprit.

    If it is indeed the network card, then there might be an option to reduce interrupt load, at the cost of extra network latency.

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